Unraveling

Thin fingers of afternoon sunlight wiggled between the blinds of the pine-paneled music room of Baton Rouge songwriter, Eric Schmitt, as he relaxed into a chair for our interview, across from shelves of carefully curated LPs. This space is where Schmitt, an LSU English instructor, retreats from the stress and commotion of everyday life. Here, he creates the captivating melodies and clever lyrical narratives that fill his two full-length albums, the most recent of which, Unraveling, was released this past June.

Schmitt, who holds an MFA in Fiction from McNeese State University, hasn’t always been a songwriter. “I wasn’t really writing songs until probably 2003 when my friend [and fellow LSU instructor] Randolph Thomas and I started to get together and trade songs,” said Schmitt. Eventually joined by Denise Brumfield, Kevin Casper, and Jimmy Sehon (who replaced Thomas in 2009), Schmitt and Thomas formed the popular Americana/Country band Flatbed Honeymoon, which remained active in Baton Rouge and surrounding areas until 2013. Though the band collaborated on the arrangements of each song, Schmitt explained, “We brought our own tunes to the table.” When the group went their separate ways, Schmitt had already built up enough of a repertoire to settle comfortably into the local songwriting scene as a solo performer.

His writing style evolved along with this transition. “I started playing more intricate, finger-style guitar parts,” he said, “and my songs just kind of moved in [the singer/songwriter] direction.” Schmitt credits Baton Rouge’s vibrant group of local songwriters for keeping him active musically. “I don’t know what the songwriting scene looks like in other places, but I can’t imagine any town—not Nashville, that’s a ridiculous comparison—but any city comparable to Baton Rouge that has as many good songwriters, all at one time, writing really good songs,” he said. This tight-knit songwriting community challenges Schmitt to keep writing new material. While he doesn’t consider the atmosphere competitive per se, he says, “When you see good songwriting right next to you, you’re like ‘I can do that. I want to contribute; I want to be a part of this.’ It inspires you to keep writing songs.”

Considering the closeness of this creative community, it is fitting that Schmitt shared his album release with fellow songwriter, Clay Parker, who released his own record, Queen City Blues, at the Red Dragon Listening room the same evening. Parker, who is a featured musician on Unraveling, is not only a close friend of Schmitt but also an admirer of his work. Though Parker met Schmitt just as Flatbed Honeymoon went their separate ways, he still notices a difference between Schmitt’s collaborative and solo projects. “When you write for a band, you write differently—you have to think about arrangement. You have to think about that stuff on the front end. As somewhat of a solo performer, the arrangement often comes after the fact. [Eric] has evolved in that way—taking charge of exactly how he wants a song to be written and sung and putting all of the arrangement stuff aside until after.”

Schmitt himself can’t classify his sound as part of any particular genre, but he thanks his large, music-loving family for exposing him to his patchwork of influences. “I am the youngest of nine kids,” he said. “My parents were World War II-era, and they had good taste, so I grew up around just shelves of records and decades of music, so these different things have just always been kind of swimming around in me and, really, as a writer, I don’t know, sometimes, what to do with all of that.” Later in life, he discovered songwriters like Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, and John Prine and began to see the potential intersection between his background in fiction writing and his musical expression. “I gravitated towards the more lyric-oriented people—they're in that vein of folky stuff I like,” said Schmitt.

...I can’t imagine any town ... comparable to Baton Rouge that has as many good songwriters, all at one time, writing really good songs.

Though the tone of Unraveling is, for the most part, earnest, it has moments of levity that showcase Schmitt’s quirky sense of humor. The record kicks off with the rollicking “O Sadie,” which tells the tale of an estranged townie from the perspective of someone she left behind, who longs for her return, while updating her on the goings-on of the place she abandoned: “There ain’t nothin left in the middle of town/‘cept the Burger King and the Indian mound/They gonna dig it all up, put a parking lot/'cause, man, them burgers really hit the spot.”

The content of tracks that follow varies widely, but often they share a common aesthetic. “I like realism where what is on the literal level of the song is clear and easy to grasp,” said Schmitt, “but there’s a layer beyond that, and it is somewhat ambiguous and mysterious and kind of beautiful. I don’t always meet that mark. In really good songs, the way the writer captures something can suddenly make your hair stand on end.” Despite Schmitt’s humble assessment of his own work, Unraveling presents considerable evidence of his ability to create the same effects he admires. In turns melancholy and tongue-in-cheek, this sophomore effort is an assemblage of anthems and odes that confront life’s most relatable emotional experiences. Schmitt’s strongest songs are vulnerable, honest, raw, and confessional; the well-chosen title track best demonstrates this when Schmitt croons, “I never knew how much I love you/Ah, you gave me your best, but I’m a godawful mess, and we both know it.”

Such personal expressions of emotion are often autobiographical in the singer/songwriter community. Legendary songwriter Harlan Howard famously suggested that the recipe for a great song was “[t]hree chords and the truth.” However, Schmitt doesn’t necessarily adhere to this gospel as devoutly as others. Parker remarked, “A lot of his songs are pure fiction, even sometimes down to the names of towns or places. I think most of the time he approaches writing songs in the way you would approach writing a short story but in song form. I think Eric comes from a serious literary background, and his songwriting really reflects that more so than anybody else I know.”